As he well summarized Paolo Glisenti, Section General Commissioner for Italy for Expo 2020 Dubai, what could be considered the “Silicon Valley of the Italian Sport Industry” will be born at the Foro Italico. Under the aegis of Sport and Health, in fact, the start of an innovative project for Italy was announced last Friday, the establishment of an accelerator for sport tech start-ups. The occasion for the launch of “WeSportUp” was a meeting promoted at the Italian Pavilion in Dubai that virtually brought together experts and professionals in the sector entitled “Italian Sports Tech: the new frontier of sport”.
Global investments
As has been underlined during the interventions, in the last five, 25 billion dollars have been invested in this area (5 in the first six months of 2021 alone). However, few funds have arrived in Italy. The startups that are laboriously making space (about a hundred) in the Peninsula are still immature, except for some excellences, and for this reason they must be accompanied by making them meet the corporate world. “We have thought of a tool capable of pooling research and development in the sport field and capable of producing growth and development of the social and economic system – explained the president of Sport e Salute, Vito Cozzoli present in Dubai -. Hence a project rooted in Rome at the Parco del Foro Italico, to allow the enhancement of Made in Italy and to give an important demonstration of the economic dimension of sport in an increasingly technologically innovative sector, capable of giving life to new businesses, start up and smes, with high-tech digital skills and thus to generate employment for the next generations ».
Team play
Cozzoli underlined that it will be a team effort that will see Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, Startupbootcamp, a reality that operates in 14 countries and 12 industrial sectors and that “manages two sport tech accelerators in Australia and Qatar” as he pointed out. Nazzareno Mengoni, co-founder and director of Business Development Startupbootcamp Italia, and Wylab, a national excellence based in Chiavari, which represents the first Italian accelerator in this field, born in the wake of Wyscout, the Italian platform that has become the point of reference in a few years global for the selection of players (now acquired by a US company).
Three scouting cycles
In three cycles 2022, 2023 and 2024 and a job that will last for each “season” 10-11 months, a scouting activity will be carried out to eventually bring about ten startups a year to be able to contract on investments Fondo Acceleratori CDP Venture Capital Sgr – National Innovation Fund, as the manager explained Stefano Molino, and to be able to immediately create synergies with the world of institutions and sports companies, which will indeed act as benchmarks to identify the needs and areas on which the research and development of the new realities will have to focus.
WeSportUp
The WeSportUp project, the official accelerator of Sport and Health, will therefore be as open as possible to create the Italian strategic pole of innovation and attract investments for the promotion of sport and healthy lifestyles. To judge it operationally it will be Federico Smanio, CEO of Wylab, thanks to the experience gained in recent years in the Ligurian incubator that has given birth to growing companies such as Sportclubby (the founder and CEO Biagio Bartoli), a booking platform for sports and wellness that already has 700 thousand sports users and 800 facilities throughout Italy, and Noisefeed which, as the CEO and founder told us Nicolò Cavallo, after errors and course adjustments, “it has now become the reference point for international professional football with regards to real-time reporting of injuries and the health of athletes”.